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The very idea of a Buffalo Wing cupcake struck me as disgusting, over-reaching and something unlikely to last very long. ... That is, until I tasted one.

I moved on to Breakfast, Whiskey Lime and Chocolate Red Wine. In my defence, it was for research and I only ate the mini ones, not the full size. I also stopped at four. The other 12? I paid the $20 and brought them back for my editors and co-workers. Really. Well, except for Pink Peppercorn, which was the pick-me-up I needed to finish writing this.

Truth told, I’m not a huge fan of cupcakes. Despite the current fad, I’ve rarely eaten them since I grew out of birthday parties where there were games, funny hats and hot dogs.

But I was curious about ManCakes Bakery Café that opened recently at Robson and Hamilton in downtown Vancouver on a strip that includes a bunch of small restaurants, from the wildly popular Japadog to southern barbecue, and almost everything in between.

There are no frilly, pink confections at ManCakes. “All of our cupcakes have at least one ingredient that is stereotypically manly,” one of the three owners, Jeremy Wong, tells me.

What struck me before I talked to him is how gendered our society has become, from chick lit to chick flicks, and now manly cupcakes. I don’t know whether any of this is a good thing, a bad thing, a marketing thing, or an ironic, retro thing.

And, there’s no doubt that ManCakes is almost equal parts interesting flavours and marketing. Another owner, Geoff Hamilton, has a background in marketing and product development, while Tyler Farstad is the pastry chef.

The trio met in an unusual way. They are all cheerleaders — the manly, gymnastic kind. And it was while Hamilton and Wong were working on the locally shot television show Hell Cats, about “the wild world of competitive college cheerleading”, that they came up with the idea for ManCakes.

They were scarfing down cupcakes that the female cheerleaders kept raving about. But Wong and Hamilton weren’t getting it. They found them too sweet, too much icing, and not the kind of flavours that they liked.

But neither of them could bake. Wong is an entrepreneur, and has several other businesses including one that modifies cars and another that does cheerleading choreography. Hamilton had been working for Telus in marketing and program development.

But as they were talking about the concept of manly cupcakes, they realized they knew another guy and cheerleader — Farstad — who is a trained pastry chef. They enlisted him to try to create what they were thinking about.

There were lots of missteps along the way to settling on such bizarre seeming things as Chicago (caramel popcorn on top of a cheddar cheese, buttercream icing), or Pink Peppercorn Grapefruit, or Breakfast (bacon-and-egg custard and maple syrup buttercream icing).

“The biggest failure, by far, was the blue cheese cupcake,” says Hamilton. “It was revolting. When I think of blue cheese, I think of chicken wings. So, from that spectacular failure, Tyler came up with the Buffalo Wing.”

It, by the way, is the most polarizing of the ManCakes. People love it or hate it. I loved it, as well as the Pink Peppercorn and Chocolate Red Wine.

The manly ingredients, if you haven’t guessed, also include chilies, whiskey and tequila. Among the less manly seeming are egg nog (for Spicebox Christmas) and brie.

The three partners started ManCakes as an online business based in Port Moody, with the cupcakes baked in Port Coquitlam and delivered from there to anywhere that didn’t require crossing a bridge, which meant no Surrey, Langley or Richmond.

The online business meant they could test the market without high start-up costs. Beyond social media, their marketing included handing out free samples at the Sex Show, wedding fares and home and garden shows.

Within a year, they were ready for a storefront downtown with high-pedestrian traffic. In mid-2013, they found a spot on high-rent Robson Street in the 200-block that is only a few blocks from BC Place, Rogers Arena and Yaletown.

After renovations, they did a soft launch in October. They have continued with the online business, but for now, delivery is limited to downtown Vancouver because Hamilton, who had been doing the deliveries, now runs the café.

So far, so good. And already, they are looking ahead to add other food items to their menu, expanding to other locations and to eventually franchising their manly fare.

Happily, for them, it’s not just guys scarfing down the ManCakes. At least half the customers are women, which suggests that stereotypes — even when it comes to food — may not be as reliable as we think.

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